With a user friendly distribution like Ubuntu you should be able to do it.

Is Linux not a whole operating system?

Linux is a complete operating system. You simply make a special bootable CD or USB drive and tell the computer to boot that operating system instead of windows. This might be a good place to start. Depending on your level of technical knowledge it might take you a bit to get it all sorted out, but it also won't cost you anything. That's assuming of course that the problem is bad software, and not some kind of hardware failure.

I don't think it was as horrible as this review made it out to be, but it's still not a very good series. If you've got some time to kill and a fairly high blood alcohol content you might want to give it a shot. In the end I just couldn't get passed the awful dialogue, acting, and writing.

So you're still able to log into the router when the internet goes down, and the outages affect all devices at the same time?

Reading through some of the reviews on newegg.com there are a few people who wrote:

Cons: Loses connectivity to internet many times daily.

I'd say just buy a new router. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on what consumer grade router is best, but I've had good luck with linksys. I'm sure there are plenty here who would vehemently disagree with me on that though so you should probably read some reviews before buying.

The probability of such an event is so absurdly low that it's probably a moot point, but I'm not so sure that I'd dismiss the rebels' chances at victory completely. Guerrilla warfare is still a very effective strategy, and ordering an army to attack its own countrymen is way different than invading a hostile foreign country.

See In-N-Out. The beloved privately owned burger chain that has been slowly expanding from the southwestern United States. By limiting their rate of growth they are able to focus on quality control and secure supply chains of fresh ingredients.

To be fair the numbers kind of support the OP's argument more than yours. From a CNBC article today:

The labor market is coming off an ugly March in which payrolls grew by just 80,000. Unemployment ticked down to 7.6 percent, but that was due mostly to generational lows in the labor force participation rate.

This has pretty much been the story of the last few years. The unemployment number is falling, but it's an allusion created by all of the people that we just decided to stop counting.

Hatzius said he expects a slight increase in job creation from March, while RBC is projecting a net gain of 140,000, a number still considered below what is needed to lower the jobless rate absent further deterioration in job market participation.

We're technically adding jobs, but in reality it's barely enough to keep up with population growth.